


We Didn’t Start the Fire (it was my crazy housemate)

by GhostofBambi



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Firefighters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2018-12-30 02:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12098916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostofBambi/pseuds/GhostofBambi
Summary: Living with strangers, Sansa Stark will reflect later, is always risky. Sometimes they eat your food. Sometimes they hog the bathroom. Sometimes they set the house on fire. That sexy fireman with the good hair might just make it more bearable, though.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kattyshack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/gifts).



> Rest assured, whoever's interested, that I'm back to editing and finishing my Jily fics and will be posting very soon. However, my girl Katie is going through a rough time, and so I've written her a little gift. If you're a major Daenerys Targaryen fan, you might want to look away. I ain't kind.

**Chapter One**

Sansa Stark has always enjoyed the idea of being swept off her feet by a heroic Prince Charming.

It’s worth noting that her enjoyment of such an idea doesn’t mean that she believes such a thing is possible in the world that exists outside her beloved bookshelves, and indeed, she doesn’t. Sansa hasn’t had faith in the prospect of an epic, all-encompassing romance for a long time, not since she was a little girl, naïve and prone to daydreaming. That was a simpler time in her life, a sunshiny beginning to the bitter tale that was to be her adolescence, during which time she was exposed to some of the harsher elements of life’s winters and learned, to her sorrow, that romantic fantasies are just that. Fantasies. Flights of imagination. Something with which to pass the time while she soaks in a hot bubble bath with a glass of rosé and a well-thumbed copy of  _Gone with the Wind_  – for all of five minutes, because one of her housemates will inevitably hammer on the door and demand entry.

The absence of romance from the world is a cruel reality to accept, but Sansa is a sensible woman, and for the most part it hardly bothers her at all. Life is a graveyard of discarded dreams, and a girl simply must grit her teeth and get on with it.

She’s rather surprised, then, on a starless, frigidly cold October night that should be perfectly mundane in every sense, to find herself being literally swept off her feet, and into the arms of a fireman, no less.

Granted, the house is on fire, so there’s some precedent to this unexpected development in her evening.

She’s also wearing her unicorn pyjamas, which aren’t ideal for such a situation. One would prefer to be clothed in a long, flowing gown of flawless white muslin (she’s been reading a lot of Austen lately, don’t judge her) when one is lifted into the arms of her dashing rescuer – though when she confesses this fantasy to her sister later, she’ll remind Arya that she’s perfectly capable of rescuing herself. In fact, she had been walking calmly to the front door when the fireman burst in and scooped her up as easily as if she were a small child, despite her assurance that she wasn’t in need of assistance.

Still, she would have liked to be dressed a little better. What if he’s a cute fireman, like in the movies? Cute movie firemen don’t really exist, of course, but anomalies can be found in every walk of life.

They’re perfectly beautiful pyjamas, though, made from the softest cotton with matching fluffy slippers. It was thoughtful of Bran to gift them to her. Sansa will not insult his kindness by being embarrassed by her apparel. It’s not as if she’s wearing them in the middle of the day, like those people she sees at the supermarket sometimes, the ones who push twelve-packs of Carlsberg Special Brew through the self-service register shortly before lunchtime and stare at her with dead, unfocused eyes. She has nothing to be ashamed of.

"My brother bought me these pyjamas," she croaks anyway, her throat scratchy from the smoke she inhaled.

The fireman carries her through the front door and into the garden, a neatly-mowed patch of green surrounded by large, flat stones that Sansa collected from the seaside. She can’t see her rescuer’s face beneath his dark visor, which makes her sudden self-consciousness seem ridiculous to her. Who says he’s dashing at all? He could be perfectly repugnant. He might not even  _be_  a man. She’s certain that she’s the taller of the two of them, and all three of her brothers would certainly dwarf him. Brienne could probably bench-press him, now that she thinks of it.

Though, Brienne could bench-press the sun, so that’s not exactly a criterion for the ages.

If he responds, she can't hear his voice. Perhaps it's muffled by his helmet, or perhaps Margaery Tyrell's ear-piercing shriek as Arya vaults out of the second-floor window and lands on the lawn in a perfect forward roll - which Sansa supposes might come as a slight shock to anyone who doesn't know Arya like she does - is simply so loud that it drowns out any other sound.

"Jesus, Arya!" Margaery cries. "What the hell are you doing?"

Arya springs to her feet and bursts out laughing when she notices the shocked expression on the nearest fireman’s face – unlike Sansa’s fireman, he’s got his visor up, and is handsome in a dark, unpolished kind of way – while Margaery pretends to swoon in shock and is promptly caught by a third firefighter, a woman with a pretty face that Sansa feels like she knows, though she can’t recall from where.

Her fireman, who stopped in his tracks the moment Arya made her leap to freedom, resumes normal operations and carries her past her housemate and her sister. As they pass, Sansa spies Margaery as she flutters her lashes at the familiar-looking woman, who grins widely in response. Sansa’s seen that move so many times that their inevitable dalliance flashes before her eyes - a series of saucy text exchanges (Margaery  _always_  reads texts from her paramours aloud for Sansa's benefit) and pouting couple poses on Instagram.

She feels a little dizzy. Her throat hurts, and her eyes feel as though she’s been chopping onions.

"Where’s Daenerys? Is she safe?" she asks the fireman, once he has set her on her feet by the back of the fire engine. The effort of speaking makes her cough into her hand.

"She’s been arrested," says the fireman, who has procured a blanket from somewhere, and is draping it around her shoulders. "Don’t worry."

"I don’t – she  _what_?" Her fingers curl instinctively around the frayed edges of the fabric. She must have misheard him. "When? Why?"

"I don’t know all of the details, but it’s fine. You’re safe now," he says, and pats her shoulder with his thickly gloved hand. It’s an oddly comforting gesture. "Are you feeling alright?"

"My living room is on fire and my housemate is in prison, apparently," she says, then coughs again. "Not the worst Monday night of my life, and not a trip to Disneyland, either."

The fireman gestures to the back of the truck. The doors are wide open and the loading bay is clear. "Perhaps you should sit down?"

"No, I’m fine," says Sansa, and sits down anyway. "Maybe. Yes. No. Perhaps. I’ve got such a headache, I think."

"I’ll be back in a minute, and then I’ll try to – just wait here."

He turns and practically dashes back to the house. Great, she thinks. Her unicorn pyjamas and general lack of coherency scared him away. It's Daenerys's fault for getting arrested and throwing her for a loop. Even when she's not present, Dany's making her life more difficult.

Whatever. He probably wasn’t that cute, anyway.

In the garden, Margaery – who got out of the house first – is flirting animatedly with her new friend, while Arya is pestering the other fireman to let her operate the hose he’s holding. A crowd of neighbours have gathered nearby to watch the proceedings and be entertained by a misfortune that they don't have to suffer. 

She pulls the blanket a little tighter around her shoulders and straightens her back.

Sansa doesn’t enjoy being pitied, especially not when pity is naught but a thin veneer to conceal amusement. In any case, her neighbours won’t be treated to the tragedy they were hoping for. The fire is only a small one, and it doesn’t appear to have spread further than the living room, though the smoke on the ground floor was thick and frightening. She, Arya, Margaery and Daenerys were the only ones in the house, and as Dany is apparently languishing in a prison cell, everyone is present and accounted for.

"Hey," says Arya, who bounces over with great energy, her bare feet skimming over the pebbled ground as if she were treading on candyfloss. She looks comically tiny in Robb’s baggy old Sheffield Wednesday jersey and shorts, but not remotely fragile. "Budge up."

Sansa moves over a fraction, and her sister sits down beside her.

"They won’t let me play with the hose," she says miserably. "Some stupid health and safety rule, as if I’m such an idiot that I’ll accidentally blast myself in the bloody face."

Her sister has a way of bringing her out of her own head, usually with some outlandish statement or other.

"They need it to put out the fire."

"The fire's out already. The bloke holding it is just pissed because I gave him a fright and made him look weak."

"Men can be territorial with their hoses," Sansa replies, and coughs into her hand again. Arya, who didn’t inhale any smoke because there was none upstairs and she went hell-for-leather out of the window, pats her gently on the back. "Especially if you strike a blow against their fragile masculinity. You're so unfeeling."

"Says the girl who got carried out like the Princess Aurora," Arya retorts, with a dry smile.

Sansa notices the goose-prickles on her sister’s pale skin. There’s not a breath of wind to be found, but the cold in the air is unforgivably biting.

"Have some of my blanket," she offers.

"I’m fine."

"Oh, shut up," she says, and tucks her baby sister beneath her arm.

"I don’t need protecting."

"You say that  _now_ , but you’ve forgotten how pathetic you acted the last time you caught a cold."

"I had pneumonia that time."

"If you’d had pneumonia, it would have taken more than a cup of ginger tea to cure it."

"I have a highly developed immune system," her sister protests, but cuddles into Sansa anyway.

She and Arya have very little in common, truly. They’ve tried and failed to find a shared interest so often that it’s a running joke within the family. They don’t even  _look_  related. Sansa is tall and stately, with her mother’s long, thick, dark red hair, high cheekbones and fair complexion, but Arya is a tiny, scrappy little thing - all angles and bones, bruised knees and thick, dark brows over her huge, expressive eyes – and wears her brown hair short. Sansa loves pretty clothes and reading late into the night, but Arya, who can count the number of books she’s read on one hand, has never owned a pretty thing she hasn’t damaged. Her little sister's bedroom is full of trophies and accolades for her many athletic pursuits, while Sansa's lack of coordination is practically legendary.

They've both got brains, though. Heaps of them. Father always says that his daughters can run rings around the rest of the family, especially when they put their heads together. Despite their differences, and despite the fact that they'd hated each other as children, Arya is Sansa's very best friend, and in her learned opinion, the only perfect person on earth.

"The fireman with the hose is fit," her sister remarks, and loudly. The fireman with the hose immediately looks in their direction, and Arya notices because she’s watching for his reaction. She snorts in a derisive manner which tells Sansa immediately that the fireman with the hose has struck her sister’s fancy. "Pity his name is  _Gendry_."

The fireman looks scandalised, and Sansa barely holds in a laugh. "I suppose Arya is a perfectly normal name, is it?"

"We both know that our parents are mad. You don't expect other people's parents to make equally mad decisions. Bad names have repercussions."

"Like?"

"Like your housemate. She wouldn't have set fire to the house if her parents had named her Danielle."

Sansa's eyes widen. " _Daenerys_  set fire to the house?"

"Apparently."

"How do you know that?"

"Gendry told me," says Arya lightly. "With little to no coercion on my end, don’t worry."

"Oh my god, of course," Sansa breathes, staring unseeingly at the neighbours, who are beginning to disperse. Arya slips her small, calloused hand into Sansa’s and gives her a reassuring squeeze.

"Are you honestly that surprised?"

Sansa wants to say yes, but shakes her head no instead. That’s the most surprising thing – that she’s not surprised at all. Daenerys has always been preoccupied by fire, among other, equally strange insects. Really, what kind of person has three separate Facebook pages for their pet pogonas? Drogon posts more status updates than Sansa’s four siblings combined. She had to hide his updates from her feed – heaven forbid she remove him from her friend list, lest Daenerys fly into one of her self-righteous rages. She can’t listen to another long speech about respect or she’ll lose her mind.

She supposes she won’t have to now. Landlords tend not to allow arsonists back into their homes. The university might not be that keen to welcome her back, either.

"Fireman’s coming back," says Arya quietly.

Sansa looks up and spies her fireman – she can tell it’s him because he’s still wearing that bloody helmet – making his way back towards the truck. Arya raises her hand in greeting as he approaches.

"Yo," she says, completely inexplicably.

"Yo?" Sansa repeats, and gives her sister an incredulous look. "This isn't America."

"Are you both alright?" says the fireman.

"Just peachy," Arya replies.

"Good," he says, and finally,  _finally_ , removes that bloody helmet.

When Sansa was much younger, Robb's best friend, Theon, dared her to jump off the high wall at Winterfell with him, and Sansa, who normally would have refused such an idiotic proposal, was spurred to accept his challenge - for the most part because Arya and Theon were teasing her. After the deed was done, her ankle sprained and her beautiful dress soaked from the snow, Sansa became aware of her own mortality for the first time in her short life. She remembers the pain. She remembers her mother's astonishment when she heard of what her daughter had done, and she remembers the thump Robb gave Theon when he found out about it. Most potently of all, however, she remembers how it felt to plummet from a great height, sickening and exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

Out of nowhere, she’s experiencing that feeling again, because this fireman –  _her_  fireman – isn’t movie cute, or reasonably attractive, or even handsome in a dark, unpolished kind of way.

Her fireman is  _beautiful_.

No, scratch that. Even that’s not good enough. Sansa’s fireman is honest-to-goodness, heart-stopping, take-the-breath-from-your-lungs beautiful. And then some.

"The fire is out," he says, as if he hasn’t just opened a Pandora’s box and unleashed Sansa’s hormones to skitter about and be free. "Though you won’t be able to go back inside for a few days while the scene is under investigation. Do you both have somewhere to stay?"

Sansa nods.

"Our parents don’t live far away," says Arya. "They'll have room for Margaery."

The fireman’s eyes widen in surprise. "You’re sisters?"

Arya snorts again, and lifts their conjoined hands. "He thought I was your girlfriend."

"No, I didn’t assume—"

"People always do. Don’t worry about it," her sister interrupts. "I’m Arya, and this is Sansa."

"You can tell by our names that we’re related, even if we look nothing alike," Sansa puts in. Speaking. Yes. Speaking is good. She’s not about to go to pieces over a man, no matter how beautiful he is.

"What’s your name?" says Arya. "It’s not something stupid like Gendry, is it?"

"I’m Jon Snow," he says, and tucks his helmet beneath his arm. He extends his hand towards Sansa, but withdraws it sharply and yanks off his glove before she has a moment to reciprocate. Then he holds it out again, smiling in a rather… is it bashful? It can't be. Someone as beautiful as him has no business in being shy, and, as a direct result of said shyness, even more appealing. "Sorry about that." 

Sansa takes his hand and shakes it primly.

His eyes are brown, a rich, warm colour, framed perfectly by a messy abundance of soft, black curls. His every feature appears to have been carved from marble and tailored to her exact presence, and he exudes an air of melancholy that enhances, rather than diminishes, the delicacy of his perfect face. He’s not particularly tall, but he’s certainly very strong, and Sansa never knew that the gallant, inscrutable prince of her childhood fantasies had been made flesh, but now she does.

And he’s a fireman, for all that. Part of her – the less sensible part – quite wishes she could make like Margaery and swoon into his arms, but she’s already sitting down and not nearly silly enough to put such thoughts into action.

"That’s a perfectly reasonable name," she says.

"You’re really pretty," says Arya, and Sansa's toes curl in mortification.

Jon Snow's brow furrows, his eyes sliding off Sansa's face and landing on Arya’s. "Thank you?"

"It's not a compliment," Arya continues. "And I don't fancy you. I'd fancy your mate over there, if his name wasn't  _Gendry_."

"I can hear you, you know," cries Gendry, angrily brandishing his hose.

Arya rolls her eyes and jumps lithely to her feet, leaving Sansa feeling cold on one side. "Mother and father are in Brighton with Uncle Robert. I'll call Bran and let him know we're coming home."

"You can't go back inside to get your phone," Sansa reminds her.

"No need, I stashed it in my knickers," says Arya, with an angelic smile. "Back in a minute."

"Don’t go too far," says Jon. "The ambulance will be here any minute to take the three of you to the hospital."

Arya’s eyebrows travel rapidly towards her hairline. "I don’t need a hospital."

"It’s a necessary precaution, just in case you—"

"There’s nothing wrong with—"

" _Arya_ ," says Sansa warningly, which is enough to make her sister behave. Arya sticks her hand down her shorts and walks off to parade herself in front of Gendry, whom she has evidently decided to seduce.

"Your sister's pretty interesting," says Jon, watching her leave.

"We're both pretty interesting," she informs him. "Her brand of interesting is just easier to notice."

"I don't doubt the truth of that," he says, with a small smile that nearly does her in. "Sansa."

He has a soft voice, and a northern accent that reminds her forcibly of Robb and her father. She likes the way her name sounds when it falls from his lips. "You're from Sheffield."

A light of surprise in his eyes. "You can tell?"

"I'm from Sheffield too, though you'd never be able to guess. My family moved to Kent when I was very little."

"You do sound more like a southerner, aye."

"And you say 'southerner' like it's a bad thing," she retorts, fighting valiantly to keep the corners of her lips from turning up and giving the game away. "It's not _so_ bad down here, is it?"

"Nah. Not so bad lately," says Jon Snow, with a real smile this time, and of course, his teeth are perfect, and of course his eyes have to crinkle in that particular way. She wants to ask him what's changed recently that makes Kent 'not so bad' because there's a one in a million chance that his response will form along the lines of 'everything changed for me the moment I entered your burning home and clapped eyes on you,' but Sansa's willing to bet her sewing machine that this won't be the answer. Besides, her throat chooses that exact moment to play up, and she starts coughing instead.

So much for her subtle attempts to flirt. What a dignified position she's in. She should have jumped out of the window with Arya.

"Are you alright?" says Jon, for what seems like the millionth time, once she's stopped coughing and straightens up, patting her chest demurely. "How's your head?"

"Pounding, but I'll live."

"They'll check you over at the hospital and make sure that everything's – er – working up to scratch."

She raises an eyebrow.

"Sorry," says Jon. "I meant to say, they'll make sure that you're healthy. I spend too much time talking about cars."

He's blushing, and it's going to kill her.

"I was about to point out that I'm not a Ford Fiesta."

"You? Definitely not. You're a Rolls-Royce at the very least."

This surprises a laugh out of her. "You're into cars, then?"

"Not at all." He lifts a finger and points at Gendry, who is rolling up the hose and throwing covert glances at Arya, who is hovering nearby, nattering loudly on her phone. "He is, though, and I live with him."

"I understand. I could name every player in Sheffield Wednesday's starting line-up on any given day, thanks to my sister, but I've never even watched a match."

"Your sister's more of a heat-seeking missile than a Rolls-Royce, the way she jumped out of that window."

"Tell her that, and she'll be your best friend forever."

Jon Snow treats her to another achingly perfect smile, just as Margaery comes tripping over and barrels between the two of them, slinging her arm around Sansa's shoulders.

"So we survived the inferno!" she trills, with a coy smile that tells Sansa everything she needs to know about the time she spent with the female firefighter. Her smile only deepens when she catches sight of Jon. "Hel- _lo_ , sailor! Where have _you_ been all our lives?"

Jon's eyes dart left and right. "Er."

" _Margaery_ ," says Sansa, her voice low.

"Imagine sending three sexy fireman to come and rescue us. I mean, what a cliché!" Margaery continues. Sansa wishes she could say she's been drinking, but this is how Margaery always behaves, "When's your calendar coming out?"

Jon laughs, in a forced, pained, 'I'm really uncomfortable' kind of way, but Margaery misses this entirely.

"I'm totally serious. You could do a calendar. My grandmother runs a modelling agency, and I can totally - ouch!" She slaps Sansa's hand away. "Did you just _pinch_ me?"

"Yes," says Sansa.

"Thank you," says Jon.

"So we're all set to stay at home tonight. Margaery too," says Arya, bouncing over once again. Sansa's rarely been more grateful for her arrival.

"Brilliant," she says, and the relief is perhaps a little too evident in her voice. "You told Bran about the fire?"

"He already knew about the fire."

Margaery gapes at her, and Sansa almost does. Almost. She had a spinach frittata for dinner, and though she brushed and flossed thoroughly before she changed into her pyjamas, tonight _would_ be the night that a piece of spinach would find itself lodged in one of her molars.

" _How_?" she says. 

"Daenerys was live-tweeting her arson. That's how she got arrested so quickly," Arya explains, and tucks her phone into her shorts. "Ambulance is coming."

Sure enough, the ambulance pulls up next to the fire truck, bathing them all in red and blue neon, and in next to no time they're surrounded by paramedics, and Jon Snow is telling them to make Sansa their priority because she suffered the most exposure, and then they're being bundled into the back of an ambulance while Arya warns everyone that she's not about to have her organs harvested for profit because she knows all about the criminal underbelly of the NHS and woe betide anyone who comes at her with a scalpel.

The last Sansa sees of Jon Snow is him watching her as a paramedic straps her into her seat, and he gives her the smallest, most imperceptible of smiles before turning away and trudging back to the house. Then the ambulance doors close on the outside world, and Sansa wonders if she'll ever see him again.

Probably not, she assumes. Not unless there's another fire - as much as Sansa wishes she could see him again, she's not Daenerys, and she really should find out what went on with Daenerys, now that she thinks of it - and she doubts that very much, so she reconciles herself to the certainty that her time spent with Jon Snow has come to a rather disappointing end.

Little does she know.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

Later that night, Jon Snow finds himself faced with a moral quandary.

"Only you'd care about a moral quandary," says a particularly irritable Gendry, and douses his chips in an unlawful amount of ketchup. "And stop saying 'quandary,' it makes you sound like a bloody hipster."

The quandary – or problem, because now that Gendry has pointed it out, it _does_ sound pretentious – is that for the first time in Jon's short career as a firefighter, he can't help but feel grateful to the arsonist who brought him to Whitstable Road tonight, and moreover, grateful to Theon Greyjoy for bringing him to the arsonist in the first place.

When the woman you love is killed in a tragic accident, it goes a long way towards killing any romantic impulse you've ever had, which Jon has often needed to point out to his mates during a three-year dry spell that bothered them more than it ever bothered him. He had expected to spend the rest of his life with Ygritte, so when she died, he decided that there would be her and nobody else. Not being the type to indulge in casual affairs, he settled easily into life as a single man and that was fine, for a while.

What Jon didn't count on was the restorative power of time, which can heal any wound, no matter how badly it hurts at first. He's had plenty of time over the past three years, and lately, he's found himself longing for what he once had with Ygritte. Not  _exactly_ what they had, because that's unique to them alone, and she deserves a special place in his memory, but love, or some variant of it.

The problem with feeling ready for a relationship again is that in order to actually  _have_  a relationship, one must date, which is a terrifying prospect for Jon. There are so many apps now, and he can never remember if he's supposed to swipe left or right, and he doesn't know how to talk to women who aren't Yara, Gilly, Shireen or Lyanna – which barely counts, because Yara is his boss, Gilly is Sam's fiancée and Shireen and Lyanna are both under thirteen.

That said, Shireen  _does_  have a crush on him, which is pretty adorable. When she was really little, she'd spend the night clinging to his leg and imploring him to read to her whenever he popped over to babysit. Now she can barely speak when he's in the room.

Jon can sympathise with her plight. His lack of confidence in the dating arena is the reason Theon Greyjoy, Yara's younger brother, got involved in the first place.

A blind date arranged through a friend seemed, at the time, like a less harmful option than wading through the tricky, dangerous quagmire of online dating (apparently, nobody meets in real life nowadays, which makes Jon feel a lot older than his twenty-four years) but Theon's choice of woman couldn't have been more of a misfire. Perhaps he should have been more specific when Theon asked for this type – the answer he gave was 'kind,' though 'not completely insane' is usually something that should go unsaid when one is searching for a significant other.

"She's a part-time model," Theon had enthused. "And she's studying politics at uni."

What Theon  _hadn't_  said was, "She's really possessive, and she thinks there's something to be said for fascism." Anyone else might consider that information important, something that Jon needed to know, but Theon had his head in the clouds, apparently.

Thus, Jon met Daenerys Targaryen, and everything went haywire.

Women tend to go after Jon. They always like him _at first_ , before he opens his mouth and they discover to their chagrin that he's quiet, socially awkward and prone to bouts of melancholy. Whoever his parents were, and he doesn't even know their names, they must have been aesthetically blessed because he's a stupidly good-looking individual. Being attractive isn't always the wild ride people expect – he doesn't  _enjoy_  having his arse pinched by bored housewives in the supermarket – but it does a lot of the work for him when he initially meets a girl he wants to impress.

The problem with Daenerys was that he didn't _want_ to impress her, but she was impressed anyway. Following their disaster of a blind date, he'd been honest, and told her that he wasn't interested in taking things further, but his candour resulted in a month of angry voicemails and ignored texts (Theon had given her his bloody number), which in turn led to threats, which then culminated in an unexpected act of arson. She set fire to her own living room to get his attention, as she so proudly explained in a text message that he feels he'll have to show Yara at some point.

The quandary – problem, dilemma, whatever – is that Jon can't bring himself to regret anything. In a strange, roundabout way, the fire on Whitstable Road is his fault, and he can't feel as guilty as he should because it was there that he met  _her_.

In summation, Jon feels bad because he doesn't feel bad, which sets his usually stellar moral compass to wondering which way north is supposed to be. If he's going to feel grateful to someone for setting their sofa ablaze, it should be because they're keeping him in gainful employment, not because it resulted in a flirting opportunity.

Except Jon can't flirt to save his life. That's Davos's area of expertise, even though Davos is in his mid-fifties and spends most of his free time escorting his foster kids to their extracurricular activities. He's an expert talker, whereas talking is not in Jon's wheelhouse. He's got the goods physically, sure, but he got the impression from _her_ that she requires a little more from a romantic interest than the ability to flip a large tyre.

"Stop brooding, you're putting me off my dinner," says Gendry suddenly. They've been friends since childhood, both being orphans who were fostered by Davos at the same time, so Gendry is well acquainted with Jon's habit of analysing every sad moment of his life in painstaking detail. He shoves his crumpled, grease-stained bag of fish and chips towards him. "Tuck in, if you want."

Jon wrinkles his nose. They've been off duty for twenty minutes, but Yara told them to wait until she returned from… well, wherever she went because she never told them, so they're waiting in the station kitchen with a bag of takeaway food that Gendry purchased at the local chippy. "There's more ketchup than there are chips."

"At least have some of the fish."

"It's your fish."

"Just eat. I'm sick of hearing you think."

"You can't hear—"

"I  _can_ ," says Gendry stubbornly, and hands Jon a plastic fork, which he has no choice but to take. He adopts the high-pitched, old lady voice he uses to impersonate everyone, though if you ask Gendry, he has a whole repertoire of different impressions. " _Woe is me, I compared her to a car! Now I'll never know the thrill of her tender hands_   _upon my quivering bosom_!"

Jon regrets letting Gendry catch him during a  _Pride and Prejudice_ marathon, but Colin Firth is his favourite actor and he shouldn't be judged for his preferences.

"Shut up," he replies. "You didn't do much better with her sister."

"Her sister is fucking annoying," says Gendry, scowling darkly at his battered cod. "The fact that I'm definitely in love with her doesn't change that."

"You two are such fucking teenagers," says Yara Greyjoy, who sweeps into the room with one rucksack swinging from her shoulder and another cradled in her arms like a sleeping baby. "Sitting here moping about your pathetic love lives."

"Ta," says Gendry.

"You've got too much ketchup on those chips," Yara informs him, and dumps one of the rucksacks on the table. "I've got a job for you both."

"We're off the clock."

"Like I care," says Yara impatiently. "Remember those girls from Whitstable Road? Gendry clearly fucking does."

Jon's ears prick up, kind of like Ghost's do whenever he hears the refrigerator opening, except Ghost couldn't teach a seminar on the art of acting pathetic, and Jon obviously could. "Yes?"

"I've got their stuff here in these bags. Laptops and clothes and makeup and the like. I need you to bring it to the hospital."

Jon ignores his heartbeat's sudden change of pace, and pushes his glasses up his nose – he only wears contacts when he's on active duty because he hates how they feel in his eyes. "How did you get their stuff?"

"Margaery asked me to sneak into the house and get their things."

"But that's not allowed."

" _But that's not allowed_ ," Yara repeats, and blows a raspberry, as if they're back at primary school. That makes two people who've mimicked Jon in the last five minutes. "Piss off, Pollyanna. I've got a date with her tomorrow night which is absolutely going to end in sex. She gets her laptop if she wants her laptop."

"How do you know they're still in hospital?" Gendry puts in.

"Margaery's how I know," she adds, brandishing her phone. "We've been texting."

A slight frisson of worry runs through Jon, who otherwise feels tremendously excited. And terrified. "Are they all alright?"

"Yeah, they're fine, but you know NHS queues these days," says Yara. "I've got paperwork to write up if I actually want to  _make_  the date tomorrow, so I can't do it myself."

"I suppose I can go," Jon quietly agrees.

"Control your thirst, Jonathan," says Yara scornfully. "You can both go. What kind of leader would I be if I didn't help you both to get your ends wet? You're helpless without me."

" _No_ ," says Gendry emphatically. "I don't want to see that girl again. She's nuts."

"You said you were in love with her."

"Because I clearly have some mental issues that need attention."

"I know her, you know," says Yara, and steals a chip from the bag, though she wipes the ketchup off with her finger before she pops it in her mouth. "Their brother is friends with my brother. I haven't seen Sansa since she was little, but I know Arya from kickboxing. She's pretty cool."

"She goes to your kickboxing class?" says Gendry, trying to look as if he doesn’t care, and failing miserably.

Yara snorts. "She  _teaches_  the class."

Gendry buries his head on the table and groans, but Jon peers at Yara with interest. "Theon knows those girls?"

"Mmm," says Yara, scoffing another chip. "You know that big hullabaloo last year over the university's shitty policies on on-campus rape and that victim support group that got set up afterwards?"

"Yeah?"

"Sansa's responsible for that."

And with that, Jon learns that Sansa, AKA Whitstable Road Redhead AKA Britain's Most Beautiful Woman AKA I Can't Deal With This, is perfect, as well as breathtakingly pretty. Brilliant. Because he wasn't nervous enough about seeing her again already, Yara might as well toss Sansa's unquestionable superiority onto the pile.

"She helped Theon, too, after the assault," Yara continues. "He probably wouldn't have had the balls to testify in court if it weren't for her. They're really good friends."

Jon feels an unnecessary, unfair and shameful stab of anger towards Theon, because why, knowing his preference for redheads, altruism and genuine common decency, did his friend elect to set him up with Daenerys Targaryen when he was friends with  _her_? What else can life throw at Jon today? Has Sansa ended poverty recently? Is she married to Handsome Robb from CrossFit? Girls  _love_  Handsome Robb from CrossFit, and he  _is_  married, though Jon doesn't know his wife's name and hasn't ever met her. It's probably Sansa. That's probably why Theon never set them up – he already set her up with Handsome Robb, who is confident and charming and taller than Jon by at least two inches.

Not that Jon's hung up on his height, or anything. Not usually.

It's just – he wasn't expecting to meet the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in a fire on Whitstable Road, much less behold her as she emerged through a blanket of thick smoke like a ruby-crowned goddess of the embers, but that's exactly what did happen, and having never prepared for such a phenomenon, Jon found himself sweeping her off her feet and into his arms before his better judgement had a moment to catch up with his frantic, thumping heart. He hasn't been able to get her out of his head ever since.

Yara will smack him for that, once she cares to remember. Technically, he shouldn't pick up someone who is perfectly mobile and not in any immediate danger. Sansa would be well within her rights to sue the department for sexual harassment, and he wouldn't blame her. He compared her to a  _car_ , for crying out loud, and despite Davos's assurances that he might be able to salvage that mess because he chose a fancy car to use in his analogy, Jon's not quite sure if that's true.

"I'm not going. I don't want to see that maniac," Gendry insists, lifting his head from the table. This, as Jon knows, is Gendry's way of begging to go without appearing desperate. For all his theatrics, it's obvious that he's got a thing for the younger girl, Arya. It's easy to see why, because she's athletic, derisive and quick to laugh – just Gendry's type.

He desperately wants to see Sansa again.

He desperately  _doesn't_  want to see her again, lest he say another stupid thing. Jon has a lot of thoughts - deep thoughts, even poetic thoughts, despite his face's habit of assuming vacant, doe-eyed expressions - but he's rubbish at putting them into words.

Sansa probably doesn't have that problem. Sansa was more articulate than Jon with a hacking cough from smoke inhalation. Sansa has eyes that couldn't possibly seem vapid. Sansa is probably married to Handsome Robb from CrossFit, but that's a slightly less pressing worry at the moment.

He briefly considers siding with Gendry, but he  _must_ erase all memory of that terrible car comment from her head, and he's not going to get a better chance than this.

"You  _are_  going," says Yara to Gendry. "Don't be difficult."

"I'm not. I'll do the paperwork, you go."

"I can't believe you're frightened of a pretty girl."

"I'm still not going."

"You can borrow my Maserati. Arya likes fast cars."

"I'll drive," says Gendry, and gets up from the table.

* * *

When they arrive at the hospital, Jon and Gendry are forced to partake in a bout of schmoozing to get past the woman at the reception desk, who refuses to let them through to see the girls because they're not family. Jon is spectacularly crap at schmoozing and Gendry's no better, but they're saved by Margaery Tyrell, who glides over like a figure-skating slumber party attendee and throws a rather smug smile at the receptionist before linking arms with them both.

"I was waiting for you both to get here," she says, with the air of one who is sharing a juicy secret. "Look at me, right in the middle of a handsome sandwich!"

She takes them through a set of double doors and down a level in the elevator, where they find Arya – so small that her hospital gown completely dwarfs her – curled up in a hard, metal chair that's screwed into the floor outside an examination room. She opens her big, lurid eyes and blinks owlishly up at them as they approach her.

"I knew you'd be back," she says to Gendry.

"Our boss made us come. Don't flatter yourself," Gendry replies, and tosses one of the rucksacks in her direction. If she was sleepy before, she shows not a hint of it now, because she catches the bag immediately - her reflexes are excellent - and winks at Jon before unzipping it, otherwise ignoring Gendry completely.

Less inclined to take someone's eye out with a flyaway strap, Jon hands the second rucksack he's holding to Margaery, who purrs her thanks and strokes his arm in a rather predatory way before sitting down next to Arya. He's itching to ask Arya about Sansa – how she's doing, where she is, if she's married to Handsome Robb from CrossFit, but at least one of those questions would make him look like he's come here specifically to stalk her sister.

"How are you both doing?" he says instead.

"Fine," says Arya, who is rummaging through the bag and doesn't look at him. "Got told off for jumping out the window."

"I'm better now that I've got some proper clothes," Margaery puts in, extracting some kind of blouse from the rucksack she's holding and giving it an appreciative once-over. "I'm not appropriately dressed for the hospital  _at all_."

Margaery is dressed in the most outrageously luxurious robe and pyjamas Jon has ever seen, and looks like a woman who has just been told that her wealthy older husband has died under mysterious circumstances. All she's missing is a bottle of arsenic, her own reality television show and a couple of beefs with some other, equally wealthy housewives.

Not that Jon  _watches_  those shows. Except for when Edd comes over because Edd loves that stuff. Watching telly with Edd might not be particularly good for the soul, but it's still more enjoyable than watching with Gendry, who categorises his favourite genre as 'explosions.'

"And how is your sister?" he presses on, now that it's safe to ask – though to his credit, he  _does_  care about how Arya and Margaery are doing. Particularly Arya, because he's warmed to her. Growing up without a real family, Jon had always wanted a sibling, and he always pictured a kid who looked just like her, big eyes and scraped knees and all. He might have been more taken aback by Arya's striking resemblance to his imaginary baby sister had he not been so blindsided by  _her_. Sansa. Sansa, and her beautiful red hair and her perfectly-formed lips and those cheekbones that could cut glass.

"She's alright, they're just checking her over to make sure she doesn't need to be kept in, but she says she feels fi—hey!" Arya's eyes light up as she draws a long, black-handled pocketknife from the rucksack. "Yara packed my switchblade!"

"What?!" Gendry yelps. "You told me you didn't live in that house!"

"I don't," says Arya, transfixed by the knife. "I was just sleeping over."

"So you just carry a bloody switchblade around to other people's houses?"

Arya looks up at Gendry with an expression of pure disgust. "I'm five foot nothing and I look like a baby deer. Why  _wouldn't_  I carry a switchblade around? You think I've never been mugged?"

Gendry's eyes widen. "You've been mugged?!"

"No, I haven't!" she snaps. "I carry a switchblade around and I teach martial arts for a living. Would  _you_ mess with me in a dark alley?"

"God," says Margaery, and makes a big show of fanning the air around her. "Get a room, you two!"

"I think perhaps we should put the knife away," Jon interjects, just in case Arya stabs Gendry with it or something. She looks like she wouldn't be averse to a stabbing or two. "At least while we're in the hospital."

Arya's eyes move to his face and rest there for a moment, then she flips the knife shut. "You're right. Sorry."

"Oh, you'll say sorry to _him_ ," says Gendry resentfully.

"Because  _he's_  sensible."

"I'm plenty sensible!"

"Nobody named Gendry can be sensible," she counters, and tucks the knife back into her rucksack. "Why did your mother give you that name? Didn't she love you?"

"How can someone so small be such a pain in my arse?" says Gendry, and shoves a hand through his tousled black hair in great agitation. "A bloody pain in – do you want a coffee or something?"

Arya lifts an eyebrow with great delicacy. "Sure."

"What kind?"

"Black, no sugar."

"Fine," he says, through gritted teeth, as if she forced him to make the offer at gunpoint, then turns and storms off in the direction of the elevator. Arya sighs serenely and leans back in her chair.

"I think he likes you," says Margaery.

"Shut up, I don't care," Arya retorts, then looks at Jon. "Does he? Whatever. I don't care. Are you looking for Sansa?"

"Yes. No. I mean," he says, thrown by the sudden change of question. "Is she alright?"

"I knew it," she says to Margaery. "He fancies her."

"He _definitely_ fancies her," Margaery adds, and cocks her head to the side, like a robin preparing to feast on a particularly juicy worm.

"I don't - I'm interested in her welfare," he responds, an autopilot reaction, though god only knows where it came from. "For professional reasons."

Arya scoffs loudly. "Liar."

To her left, a door opens and a wizened-looking doctor hurries out. Behind him, however, and almost if they'd summoned her through the power of thought – or longing, in Jon's case – _she_ appears, wearing a hospital gown that works in direct opposition to the tent her sister is wearing because it is far. Too. Short. And goddamn, her legs are  _long_  and shapely and now Jon hates himself because he's staring and it's so. Bloody. Obvious.

He wants to sweep her into his arms again, only this time he wants to carry her somewhere a little more private and do things to her that wouldn't be considered chivalrous by any stretch of the imagination, but his own desire must be less obvious than he thinks, because she seems inexplicably happy to see him and does not, in fact, start screaming for hospital security.

"Jon!" she says, and smiles, a wide, pretty thing that reaches all the way to her eyes.

He can't help but smile in return. "Sansa."

" _Margaery_ ," says Arya, dropping her voice to a deep baritone.

"Take me away with you, baby girl," Margaery replies, and they both start laughing. Sansa tosses them a confused look.

"Having fun out here?" she says. "I've been discharged, Dr. Qyburn is just going to sign me out."

"Cool. Cool, I'm glad you're going to survive," says Arya. "Margaery and I will go and tell Gendry. Come on," she adds, and grabs Margaery's arm. "Doe Eyes over there will take care of our bags.

Giggling, Margaery allows herself to be led away by Arya, who gives Jon the thumbs-up as she passes him, and then he's left alone with Sansa and it's painfully embarrassing because Arya has not been subtle, and now the danger is that Sansa will assume that Jon has been waxing lyrical about her in front of her housemate and her sister.

"You wear glasses," she says, and presses a finger to her cheekbone, just beneath her eye.

"I do."

"Real or hipster?"

This surprises a laugh out of him. "Why do people always assume that I'm a hipster?"

"I think it's the man-bun." She cocks her head to the side to study him better, and her impossibly long hair tumbles past her shoulder, and he can't help but follow the path of it, which is mesmerising, like an optical illusion, because it's not just red, it's crisp autumn leaves and sweet, red apples and even hints of molten gold, and it holds its own even in the sickly, unforgiving light of a hospital corridor. "Yep. Definitely the man-bun, though I suppose I can revoke your hipster status if you tell me that the glasses are real."

"I'm blind as a bat without them," he confesses. "Is that good enough?"

Her eyes narrow for a moment, but then she appears satisfied. "Just about."

Now would be the time for a brilliant comeback, the kind of thing that guys in movies never seem to struggle with, but Jon isn't a guy in a movie, he's a real, living, painfully awkward man and Sansa is a Titian dream made flesh, so instead of dazzling her with his wit, he says, "Good, because I'd hate to disappoint you," and immediately feels like a complete imbecile.

Davos would be so disappointed. Years of training, gone to waste.

"I'm really glad you came, you know," she says, but just as Jon's heart leaps into his throat, she adds, "I didn't get to thank you earlier for what you did, which was really rude of me-"

Immediately, he's red in the face because she _can't_ think he's come here just to fish for gratitude. "You don't have to thank me for-"

"No, I do, I think I was in shock, honestly. The fire was-"

"It would be a shock for anyone."

"That's not an excuse, and I want you to know that I'm grateful, and say thank you-"

"There's nothing to thank me for."

"I'm thanking you anyway."

"Seriously, it's not-"

"Jon Snow," she says, very sternly, as if she's about to sit him down, tell him off and send him to his room without dinner. "Are you as clever as those glasses make you appear?"

Right now, Jon feels as if he knows nothing, but he must make amends for his previous impression of an awkward puppy. "I'd like to think I am."

"In that case, you'll accept my thanks for coming to my rescue, because I might set my sister on you if you don't. Your choice."

Her smile is knowing, and with  _that_ face, and those long, long legs of hers, he's in grave danger of suffering a critical case of tight pants in a brightly lit area, which would truly be the icing on the cake that was this confusing, exhausting day. God only knew what Sansa would do if  _that_ sprang up. Get Arya to cut it off with that switchblade, probably.

"Alright," he agrees, thinking of this with displeasure, which is good because he needs the distraction. "I wouldn't want to incur your sister's wrath."

"That's a wise decision," she agrees. "Though it would be very ungrateful of Arya to murder you when you've offered to give us a lift home."

 _This_ is news to Jon, and it seems his expression shows it, because the smile is dropped from Sansa's face immediately.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she says, looking confused. "Only Yara said that you-"

"Yes. No. Yes," he swiftly interrupts, feeling the heat sweep up his face. "We did offer. To your parents' house, yes?"

"That's right, only please don't feel obligated, it's just that it's so late and Rochester isn't exactly down the road."

There's a drum beating in Jon's ear that falls perfectly in tune with his heart, and he thinks,  _Yara_. Of course, Yara would volunteer 'her boys' to take Sansa, Arya and Margaery all the way to Rochester, which is a fifty minute drive in good traffic, even though it's past eleven and he's been on duty since 8am and he's really, really tired, not to mention head-over-heels for a girl he met a few hours ago and completely unable - from an ethical perspective - to do anything about it, both because he saved her from a fire and because of her husband, Handsome Robb from CrossFit, who has more to offer a woman than he ever could.

Except she's not wearing a ring and damned if he's not already planning the route in his head.


End file.
